Stayed at: Swargam Hostel, Yoga, India, 7 nights (although, no yoga!)
Points of Note: Coffee Temple became our favourite breakfast place – real baked beans and great coffee!
Trains to Varkala were fairly regular, so we weren’t too concerned about getting up and out early, it was only an hour’s journey north. We knew that there were buses and trains going from Trivandrum, so the first mission was to get there. After failing to haggle with a tuk tuk driver (he wanted to charge us for his return fare to Kovalam!) we set off up the hill in the early afternoon heat. Thankfully, another passing tuk tuk picked us up for a much more reasonable price – a good think as the bus stop was much further than we thought…and up a very steep hill. Arrived at the bus stop just in time for the next one to Trivandrum – a proper rattily old local bus with no windows going at break-neck speed! We weren’t really sure where it we were going to get dropped off, but when it stopped near a ‘bus station’ we hopped off with most of the other passengers. It had started raining quite hard by this point, so covered our bags with our bright red rain covers (just to make us stand out that little bit more) and went in search of our next mode of transport.

A few confusing conversations later, we were on another bus winding our way through the city to the train station, the kind ticket lady let us know where to get off as it all seemed a bit manic. The main bus station was opposite the train station so thought we’d try our luck with the bus first…finally managed to find the ticket office and were informed it was another 2 hours till the next bus…ok, let’s check out the train….across the road and through the scrum at the ticket office – a train in less than an hour – great – we’ll take 2 seats! It’s worth noting here though that I didn’t even need to tell the ticket lady where we were going – she took one look at our bags and enquired – “Varkala?” – Yes! Thank you very much!

The interesting part of Indian railway stations is the lack of clear signage for which train is which. Even the announcements are quite hard to work out. After a bit of umming and arring (and a quick cup of chai) we worked out that we were on platform 3 (good) and that the train sitting at the station was in fact the one we wanted. We’d got an unreserved sleeper ticket (not the mad scrum of 2nd class), but all of the sleeper carriages seemed to be suggesting that you needed a reservation! We got on one and double checked with a few people that we were on the right train, but they told us that we needed a reservation to sit there…so off we got and moved up a few carriages. Same thing – asked the guy next to us if we were ok to sit there; so, he turns round to another guy with our ticket and starts talking in Malayalam – the only words we can make out are “foreigners” and “Varkala”!...no worries, we had a seat.

It took a little while to find our ‘hostel’ as it was quite tucked away and not very well signposted, but we got there…it didn’t look anything like the pictures….he led us through a few little lanes within the grounds of his house (past his very barkey Alsatian – called Lucky) – at one point, James turned around with a ‘what the hell??’ look on his face! Well, for £2 per night, we couldn’t complain – it had a bed, a lock and a toilet. Perfect. He even said he’d upgrade us to the bigger room the next day (the bed was rather on the small side). With that, we set our stuff down and went for an explore…and a beer (or 3)…

Varkala was a bit more lively that Kovalam, more of a travellery vibe which was nice. There didn’t seem to be too much to explore in the vicinity, so we had a week of gentle mooching of shops on the strip and long lazy meals. We even managed to have a few hours on the beach! Although the weather wasn’t as stormy as Kovalam, it was still quite overcast – probably a good thing as otherwise it would have been tooooo hot!

I was keen to do some yoga classes, so had found somewhere that did a 90 minute class twice a day (for the equivalent of £3!), so on the Sunday morning, I got up early and trotted off down the main strip to the yoga place, where I proceeded to hang around for about 15 minutes by myself in the (light) rain. The teacher was sick that day…how disappointing. The place we were staying offered yoga mats in the upstairs area (this would be the Yoga part of the name), so I went back did a class I’d downloaded onto my phone. It was ok, but the yoga mats had definitely seen better days. I gave them a miss for the next few mornings and proceeded to do yoga on our rather hard beds! James got back into doing his exercises too, so mornings were a flurry of activity in our little room – working up a sweat so the cold shower wasn’t quite so cold!

And so we whiled away the week mainly eating and wandering around. Quite a bit of time was spent working out our next move; we knew that we wanted to go to Kochi next, but where after that?! 2 plans formed – 1) Go straight to Goa (15 hours on the train), 2) Head inland to Mysore, then up to Hampi and then into Goa – the 2nd option would have taken up about a week and would have cost almost double in travel and accommodation, also it would mean leaving the beach (!). we took a few days to think it over and eventually sought advice from James’s sister – straight to Goa it was. Now just to book a ticket! We did not seem to be enjoying the same luxury of any pick of the trains that we had up in the North. Although we tried to book the tickets from a little independent travel guy near the beach, we ended up having to go to the station and book them, no issues though, we even managed to get in the class we wanted (2 AC sleeper – for 15 hours, it would be a bit more comfortable!).

We found some great little places to eat and yet again set into a bit of a routine. For breakfast, we gradually migrated to a coffee place near where we were staying, it is run by expats and does proper baked beans and scrambled eggs on toast – with a cup of builders tea, James was in his element! We are beginning to find it a bit of a chore picking all of our meals from a menu (as strange as it sounds), so to have somewhere nice and easy for brekkie was great. It wasn’t the cheapest place we found, but we liked it. James found a tandoori chicken pizza one night – a little taste of home (and away) – it was amazing! We’ve started reintroducing more meat into our diets here and it’s been quite nice. Gives us a bit more variety. The food so far (throughout India) has been amazing…the Keralan style chicken curry – we could eat that all day!

Feeling like we hadn’t been very active, one day we decided to keep walking North along the cliff path, it was a lovely walk and took a few hours, although when we got closer to civilisation, we realised we had no idea where we were! We had walked about 6km up to the next little ‘town’ called Kappill, the only thing there being a big lake – nice enough to look at, but that’s about it. On the way, I’d stubbed my toe on a rock, which had then proceeded to bleed – all very well until we got to the beach and had to walk across it. So with me hobbling along and James getting hungry, we decided to get a tuk tuk back to our little strip and grab some lunch. We were shattered! All that exercise!

At some point in the week, the bar/restaurant next door actually opened (no wonder when we went in they had to send out for beer! – very kind of them not to just turn us away though) and began pumping out innocuous trance for most of the day. However as we were syphoning off their wifi, we couldn’t really complain. They also had a super cute 2 month old puppy called Lucy who like to ruck…a lot! On the subject of puppies, we were walking back one day and saw 3 very small (maybe a week old?) puppies by the side of the road. They didn’t look like they’d just been born there, but there was no mother in sight. Not really knowing whether they’d just been dumped there or whether mum was coming back for them, we left them there (although I wanted to pick them up and ‘save’ them, I felt so wrong just leaving them)…as we walked back an hour or so later, they had all gone – so either mum had got them or someone else had saved them. Poor little b*****s.

Other than doing a bit of shopping for some new threads, that just about sums up our week in Varkala! It’s amazing how quickly a week can go, and how quickly we’re getting used to not having much to do. I finally managed to finish Gandhi’s autobiography – it was a tough one.

After the success of booking our tickets to Goa (I tend to feel like we’ve accomplished something big every time we manage to book train tickets!), we had a few more hours of lovely beach time – it was super hot! At dinner, we met another couple (Hannah and Elliott) who seem to be following roughly the same route as us, albeit a few weeks ahead. No doubt, we’ll bump into them somewhere else along the way! But they’ve at least promised to stay in touch with advice on Myanmar visas which is helpful! So with some new and lovely company, we spent the evening working through a few bottles of Kingfisher, chatting about stuff and watching a reallllly long lightning storm.

And with that, another week has passed. We’ve been on the road for 6 weeks now (well, 15 if you include Europe) and I think we’re settling into the swing of things. As tough as it is, we’re leaving the beach behind for a few days to go up to Kochi. Will be good to get out exploring again…